10/16/13 The World Starves Because of Meat Eating!

On World Food Day and World Poverty Day, Animal Friends warns: World starves because of meat eating!

- Consuming meat, milk and eggs is directly connected to world poverty and hunger

According to UN data, one in seven people don't know if they will have enough food to survive the day. While, on one side, residents of developed countries overeat food of animal origin and suffer from obesity and heart disease, on the other side, over 900 million people in the world are starving, and 2 billion are malnourished because the grains that they could use for food are used to feed cattle.

October 16 is marked by the whole world as the World Food Day and World Anti-McDonald's Day. For this date, Animal Friends would like to point out the connection between the completely unnecessary production of meat, milk and eggs, and world poverty and hunger. Every year over 60 billion animals are farmed in order to be brutally slaughtered for hamburgers and other meat products.

Meat is an especially wasteful way of producing food, and on average there are 10 kilos of vegetable protein used for one kilo of meat. Five to 10 times more water is used for meat production compared to the production of food of plant-based origin, and one-third of agricultural land in the world is used to grow grains to feed cattle. The countries of the West are using their power to insist that less well-off countries grow food for animals of the West instead of producing food for their own people, and therefore directly impacting the poverty problem in the world. The current diet, based on growing grains to feed animals destined for slaughter, is unsustainable and contributes to catastrophic food shortages and an increase in hungry and poor people around the world.

For years, McDonald's has been accused of crimes against animals, huge ecological damage, children and worker's exploitation, child manipulation, serving unhealthy food, and contributing to hunger in the world. McDonald's is responsible for the suffering and deaths of millions of animals each year. There is a direct connection between McDonald's and the destruction of rainforests for pastures. They are thereby wiping out many plant and animal species, dislodging local populations, and encouraging global warming. They offer minced animals full of pesticides and antibiotics, crammed in a colourful packaging as food, which is why all McDonald's restaurants in Bolivia were shut down last year.

If we were to preserve our supplies of grains and give them to the poor and malnourished instead of using them to feed animals, we could feed almost all the chronically malnourished people in the world. The meat is the least economical food group that we eat: the price of one kilo of meat protein is 20 times more costly than the price of an equal amount of protein of plant origin, which is why countries subsidise meat, milk and egg industry.

Animal Friends will celebrate World Food Day (October 16) and the World Poverty Day (October 17) by holding an information stand on Trg kralja Tomislava in Zagreb, where the organization will show a spot "If Fast Food Could Speak" directed by Louis van Zwol and produced by the IanErik company from Amsterdam, Netherlands, starting at 7 P.M. In collaboration with the non-profit organization for animal rights Mercy For Animals, who have shown a one minute version of this spot to a large audience base in the USA. Animal Friends will show this video clip via YouTube to the Croatian audience to recognize World Food Day and World Poverty Day.

The world hunger problem is artificial. At this moment there is more than enough food produced to feed every person on our planet, and still many people are starving and dying from hunger because over 60 billion animals are killed for people to eat every year, which uses an enormous amount of natural resources, contributes to environmental pollution, and plays a large role in global warming. The fact that people can live without meat is concealed and disregarded, as is the fact that by eating food of plant origin people would become healthier, they would get sick less and would live longer.

Changing to a meatless diet opens up the possibility of a rational use of natural resources. Therefore Animal Friends invites citizens to protect themselves and their children and to think about a healthy diet from plant origin for which no animals are killed, which does not impact world hunger and does not destroy our environment.

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Animal Friends is a non-profit, non-governmental organization, founded in 2001 with the aim to promote animal protection and animal rights as well as veganism, as ethical, ecological and healthy lifestyle.
Animal Friends Croatia is a member organization of EVU,
Eurogroup for Animals, ECEAE, FFA, IAFC and OIPA.